I've only read half the posts, but it's been enough to make me feel sick to my stomach. Being homeschooled though my elementary and middle school years I can tell you it's not what most people say. In fact, it was quite insulting when I would make the comment that I was home schooled and they ask 'Are you socially deprived?' and treat me like some strange new creature.
I'm gonna list some things I've found when researching homeschooling and conclusions found by studies on homeschooling.
Socialization:
I will state now I do not have a reference on this study because I was not able to find one on the internet, but I find the information interesting anyway. A double-blind study was done where traditionally schooled children and homeschooled children were placed on a playground, double blind meaning neither the scientists or the children knew who was who when it came to schooling. It was found that while traditionally schooled children tended to stick with others in their age range, race and gender homeschooled children would play more freely with any of the children on the playground despite age, gender or race.
Despite popular view on homeschooled children, most spend almost all their time with family or friends. In most cases either the mother or father are stay-at-home parents meaning children are almost never completely alone. There are co-ops and homeschoolers tend to get together with other homeschoolers allowing their children to be friends. When I was young, 90% of my best friends were homeschooled. Because of the flexibility of the homeschooling schedule, sleep overs and get togethers could happen any day of the week.
It's also worth noting that homeschooled children are more likely to have 1 or 2 siblings and that less than 10% of homeschooled children are without any siblings at all.
71% of homeschooled adults are active in their community as opposed to 37% of traditionally schooled adults and 88% were a part of some organization or group as opposed to 50% of traditionally schooled adults.
Educations:
Growing up, work quality was always more important than grades. In fact, through elementary school and middle school grades meant very little to me. If I took a test and did not do well, my mom had me review the material and retry the test later until I could get an acceptable (A or B level) grade. Some may say it's unfair but in reality it's actually a much more efficient teaching method because almost no matter what I'm
learning the material. Living in PA, I had to take PSSA's every few years and also other tests to make sure I was on target and on every test neither my sister or I ever scored below the 97 percentile.
74% of homeschooled students 18-24 take college level courses as opposed to the 49% of traditionally school students.
Only 4.2% of homeschooled adults find politics and government too complex to understand as opposed to 35% of traditionally schooled adults. 76% of homeschooled adults ages 18-24 voted as opposed to 29% of the same group in traditionally schooled adults. Homeschooled adults surveyed on their quality of life have been found to be overall more content.
When a child in school is doing badly, what are some of the things teachers suggest? Tutoring, parents help with homework, or child visits teacher for extra sessions. One-on-One attention and generally their grades improve. So what happens when you give a competent student one-on-one attention for the entire year? The result is the same amount of schoolwork done at a better quality in less time. Homeschoolers can achieve the same amount of schoolwork done in sometimes less than
half the time. Some homeschoolers use this to an advantage, and do double the amount in 1 year, others simply only do about 2-4 hours of schoolwork a day and then have the rest of the day free. Homeschoolers are also found to be more well rounded because they've had the free time to develop their own skills and the like. I started programming before I was ten years old and for the past few years I've earned thousands of dollars in programming alone.
There is another skill that Homeschoolers tend to learn at a higher rate than traditionally schooled children and that's how to self teach. This skill has allowed me to excel both in and out of the classroom by gaining skills such as programming and also being able to sit down with a text book and read and retain the knowledge I gain almost instantly.
Across all grade levels, homeschooled students on average scored better than students in private schools. The average homeschooled student entering 9th grade scores better than the graduating 12th grade student at the national norm.
Other:
For more accurate statistics as to WHY homeschoolers homeschool, this is a good reference:
PDF File that can be found here:
Census Findings
95% of homeschooled adults are glad that they were homeschooled. It's also worth noting that out of every 100 homeschooled children, 37 have a father who has a Bachelor's degree, as opposed to 15.6 out of every 100 children in the nation. 19/100 children have a father who has their masters degree which is almost 4 times higher than the rest of the nation. On average, the parents of homeschooled children tend to have a higher education than those of the rest of the nation.
Only .1% of homeschooled children watch more than 6 hours of TV per day, as opposed to the 19% of children in the nation. 65% of homeschooled children watch less than an hour, versus the 25% of children in the nation in the same category.
It's also a trend that the longer a child has been homeschooled, the better their scores tend to be.
References:
Education Policy Analysis Archives <- most used reference.
HSLDA
One-On-One Instruction
Academic Statistics on Homeschooling
As for the comments about Evolution I noticed earlier. Evolution is a THEORY just as much as Intelligent Design is a THEORY, yet one is taught as fact and the other is not taught at all. Both have at least some evidence based in scientific data but neither can be proved and one is not more relevant over the other. In fact, those who say believing in Evolution isn't faith are wrong because they're believing something that has yet to be PROVEN. This is a very big issue for many families who homeschool who prefer to not have THEORY taught as FACT. There is a big difference that the school system fails to identify.